The Dark Side of the Diamond

Talent Ain’t Character – The Roberto Osuna Problem

For those of you who just found this series, this is part of The Dark Side of the Diamond, something I laid out at the beginning of the season. No puff pieces. No feel-good nostalgia. Not this time. I said I was going to focus on the uncomfortable side of baseball, the things the league likes to bury, the things fans often excuse, and the things that don’t fit neatly into a Hall of Fame speech or highlight reel.

This season isn’t about celebrating the game. It’s about holding a mirror up to it. Maybe next year I’ll shift to The Bright Side. But not this year. Right now, we sit with the shame.

The Dark Side of the Diamond isn’t here to make you feel good about baseball. I’ll save the redemption stories for another season. This series is about the shadows—about dragging what’s been ignored into the light. Because baseball doesn’t just have a cheating problem or a pace-of-play problem. It has a people problem. A silence problem. A culture problem. And Roberto Osuna is one of the clearest examples.

New York Post Image

Here’s the story, an electric young closer, straight out of Mexico, debuting at 20, dominating by 22. The guy had the stuff: mid-90s heat, filthy late movement, ice in his veins. By 2017, he looked like the future of the position. But in 2018, everything changed. He was arrested and charged with assaulting the mother of his child. This wasn’t some vague accusation on Twitter. This wasn’t rumor or speculation. This was real. Police. Courts. A mugshot. And unlike Trevor Bauer, who went full scorched-earth trying to clear his name—denying, suing, podcasting, Osuna didn’t challenge a thing. No statement. No denial. No lawsuit. Nothing.

Just silence.

And in some ways, that silence was deafening. I remember waiting for something, anything, that showed some shred of acknowledgment, accountability, explanation. But Osuna let MLB do the talking. The league ran its own investigation and hit him with a 75-game suspension. One of the longest ever under the domestic violence policy. That’s not “We’re not sure.” That’s not “Let’s wait for due process.” That’s “We know enough.”

And you know what the Houston Astros did? They traded for him. While he was still suspended. While the rest of the league was treating him like toxic waste, Houston saw a bargain. A lights-out closer at a discount. That’s how cold this game can be. They didn’t even pretend to care about how it looked. Jeff Luhnow gave that tired corporate line about second chances and doing their homework, but it rang hollow. It always does. Because we all know how this works, second chances are for the talented.

If you’re just okay, they cut you loose. But if you’re elite? They throw their arms around you and say, we believe in growth. That’s the game.

And just to really make it clear where their priorities were, after the Astros clinched the ALCS, their assistant GM, Brandon Taubman, turned to a group of female reporters, one of whom had spoken out about domestic violence, and shouted, “Thank God we got Osuna!” Over and over. He didn’t slip. He taunted them. It was intentional. And when that story broke, the Astros didn’t own it. They attacked the journalist. They lied. MLB investigated, confirmed it all, and Taubman got fired, but only after they got caught. And their apology? Corporate white noise. Nothing real about it.

Meanwhile, Osuna just kept pitching. No press conference. No Instagram statement. No public apology. Just a uniform, a glove, and a paycheck. Eventually the injuries came, the velocity dipped, and the league quietly moved on. He went to Japan. Baseball forgot. But I didn’t. And if you really love this game, really love it, you shouldn’t forget either.

Because this is what we do. We cheer the velocity. We excuse the silence. And then we act shocked when the culture underneath starts to rot.

You don’t have to like Trevor Bauer to see the difference here. At least Bauer engaged, for better or worse. Osuna didn’t even bother to pretend. He just let the league spin the wheel and cash the checks. And because he didn’t make a scene, because he didn’t talk, baseball never asked him to be accountable. He slid right out the side door.

That’s the truth. And this series, The Dark Side of the Diamond, it’s about that truth. It’s about what happens when a sport that wraps itself in the flag of integrity refuses to actually live it. We’ve celebrated the wrong things for too long. This season, I’m not doing that. This is Ballpark Confidential with no filter. No sugar. No rose-colored nostalgia.

Maybe next year, I’ll tell the stories of the good guys. The mentors. The quiet leaders who reflect the values baseball loves to market. But this year, I’m sitting with the shame. I’m telling the hard stories. Because this game doesn’t grow if we don’t confront what it’s built on.